Iridoids antitumor activity

The facile conversion of carbonyl groups into lactones via cyclobutanones offers many opportunities for synthetic applications considering the importance of butanol-ides in natural products synthesis. The iridoids vividly illustrate this potential. Allamandin (163) 135 c) and its dehydrated relative plumericin (164) 135 d), compounds possessing antifungal, antibacterial, and antitumor activity, pack a great deal of... 

Only few of the iridoids biosynthesized by route II have been assayed for antitumoral or chemopreventive activities. These compounds showed higher cancer chemopreventive than antitumoral activity. The iridoids that stand out against the rest are aucubin, geniposide and derivatives, and picroliv. 

Ishiguro K, Yamaki M, Takagi S, Ikeda Y et al. 1984 Studies on iridoid-related compounds Antimicrobial and antitumor activity. Abstr 5th Symp Develop Appl Naturally Occurring Drug Materials pp. 58-60... 

Iridoids have shown a broad range of biological activities, such as an antibacterial, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, antitumoral, hepatoprotective, cardioprotective, antioxidative, antiprotozoal and anti-insect properties [13,14,15,16,17,18,19]. In vitro activities inhibiting the hepatitis C virus, the differentiation of the adipocyte, and PPARa activation activities have been also described [20, 21]. 

The pharmacological assays and activities of natural iridoids biosynthesized by route II, extracted from a variety of plants are summarized in this review, such as antiinflammatory, antitumoral-chemopreventive, hepatoprotective and healing. Structure-activity relationships are also discussed. 

Many reviews have dealt with the distribution, structure, properties and biosynthesis of iridoids and secoiridoids [131-137] without distinguish between the biosynthetic pathway route. In our case, some of the most studied activities, as anti-inflammatory, antitumoral-chemopreventive, and protective by iridoids biosynthesized by route IIa, have been discussed. 

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